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Tamim Iqbal Out For Eight Weeks Will Miss Zimbabwe T20is Australia And New Zealand Series At Home

Tamim Iqbal out for eight weeks; will miss Zimbabwe T20Is, Australia and New Zealand series at home

Bangladesh’s ODI captain and senior statesman Tamim Iqbal has been advised by the team’s and Board’s medical unit to take six to eight week’s of rest to get himself ready for the T20 World Cup in October-November. Hence after the third ODI in Zimbabwe, the 32-year-old, who hit a century to lead Bangladesh to a 3-0 whitewash over the hosts will fly back home and not take part in the following T20I series.

Tamim however is not the only one asked to prepone their trip back home as the Bangladesh team prepares to welcome Australia who would be flying to Dhaka in late July and play a five-match T20I series beginning August 2nd.

"Tamim will return home alongside Mehidy Hasan Miraz and Taijul Islam from the ODI side," Minhajul Abedin, Bangladesh's chief selector was quoted as saying to Espncricinfo.

The injury of Tamim is not recent and is supposed to date back to April when the Tigers toured Sri Lanka for two-match Test series. To avoid any serious drawback ahead of the World Cup, the BCB was forced to take this precautionary step on the advice of doctors.

"Tamim has been advised to rest for six to eight weeks. He won't be able to play against Australia [in August] and New Zealand [in September] at home, but he might play against England [in October],” he added.

To compensate for those players, the board has asked others, originally not part of the T20I squad to stay back for the series which itself was preponed by two days and will now end on August 25 instead of August 27, according to the original schedule.

“We have asked Rubel (Hossain), (Mohammad) Mithun and Mosaddek (Hossain) to stay back with the T20I side as part of our contingency plan for the Australia series,” said Abedin.

The reason behind such plans was the Covid-19 bio-bubble security ahead of the all-important Australia series as disclosed by the BCB "We have to keep players in quarantine for ten days ahead of the Australia series bio-bubble. We want to have as many options as possible as we won't be able to call up players from outside the bio-bubble,” it said.

Having already won the ODI series and the one-off Test, Bangladesh would look to remain ruthless in the T20Is against Zimbabwe too with the first of three being played on July 22 at the Harare Sports Club.

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